…how on earth it takes 3-4 hours to film an episode of The Chase? What unique challenges face it as a production? Because from where I’m sitting it’s just some people answering questions, requiring little in the way of movement and no more than about 4 different shots.
I’ve heard many war stories from people who have participated and watched the show, but no specifics.
The standard shows take about 2 1/2 hours to film. The celeb shows take a bit longer because there’s a lot more chat than the standard shows, so only the best bits make the edit (like DOND). The US pilot took even longer because it was being heavily produced (because it was a pilot).
2 1/2 hours is a fairly standard amount of time to film 1 hour of television.
That is very interesting, I’ve had contestants claim 3.5hrs, and treated fairly poorly.
There is no reason you can’t get an episode done in 2 hrs tops, 2.5 for a celeb special.
Even so, Mr Chaser, there is simply NO excuse (as I witnessed at least twice on Saturday afternoon) for taking upwards of five minutes, to remove Bradley’s podium/question autocue, move it at most 3 meters away and store it on the opposite side of the Chasers ‘C’ to where the camera run is.
During this time, Bradley mostly disappears out of view from the audience, and the contestant producers flood the stage, chatting to the celebs, passing bottled water out and most irritatigly, explaining the rules of the game at the Chasers table to each celeb when it was their turn – could that not have been done before recording started to the four as a group?
I accept that there is more banter between the celebs and Chaser (don’t mind that – means I can slump infront of the tv and during tx shout to those in the room “ahh – I thought they would cut that bit out”) but the expected breaking in recording (the aformentioned game of hide the podium) and reseting the cameras for the Chase at the table, before moving the podium back again did take an unacceptable long time. Even the camera operators were looking at watches during some of them.
It didn’t help Bradley screwing up some links (although one was so obvious I think it was done to get us in the audience laughing) and they had to do a ‘Bank Job’ twice and spin the footage back on the server, and reset the clock during one cashbuilder round, and the final chase over a overlong and incorrect pronuncation of a French name.
Again, over 2 min gap each time. Pick-ups took 5 mins at the end.
Brig is right. Speed up the moving of the question podium, and reset the cameras at the same time. Explain the rules to the contestants before recording starts and before the audience are let in, take a quick water and make-up touch up in between each round, and you could nail the recording in around 2 hours flat.
Yeah, there’s no real reason why they couldn’t do it in under 2 hours all told. At OC, we can do our 29 minutes of TV in about an hour, and that includes two position changes and the team practising their touchpad technique for the wall round.
Part of the skill is to try to stop as little as you dare. We actually run Rounds 1 and 2 consecutively, so what you see on TV is pretty much what you see on telly, with maybe a minute of chat snipped here and there.
For certain technical things, you can’t easily brief the contestants in advance but – apart from a bit of button pressing – it’s hard to understand how The Chase could take quite that long.
“…so what happens in the studio is pretty much what you see on telly” that should say.
“At OC, we can do our 29 minutes of TV in about an hour”
Of course, David probably doesn’t notice the ~4 hours of waiting the contestants have beforehand, after being told to turn up for 9am and filming not starting until 1pm. Every OC recording I went to eventually overran by several hours, and while the show recording wasn’t anything like the Chase’s claimed time, it definitely wasn’t close to an hour either. 3 half-hour shows recorded in one day is not ideal.
Having said that, being on the show was a dream come true 🙂
But we’re not comparing apples with apples. If we had an audience, they would have seen the filming wrapped up in 60-75 minutes. Certainly the last two series have run to time (at least as far as the production-side schedule went) with the exception of the Wall Night where we did overstretch ourselves.
I’m afraid calling contestants hours before they’re needed is a necessity. Quite apart from the various costume, make-up, briefing, microphone etc. stages, it’s just ultra-important that people turn up in good time otherwise we have no show. We’ve had a few close calls in the past.
Fair enough – it’s very very easy for us to complain, no doubt there are hundreds and hundreds of things behind the scenes we never see.
And David: big fan – you make a lot of people happy with what you do 🙂
Speaking of long taping times, I’ve heard reports from NBC’s Deal or No Deal that single games have taken as long as eight hours to tape. I think I’d have to start cutting myself if I were in that audience.
Oh, don’t get me started on what US directors get wrong…
Well it starts bad when it takes about 20-30 minutes to tape the model march down the stairs because they want tons of camera angles, so they repeat it over and over and over.
How many cameras did Endemol USA hire in to tape Deal or no deal? 2? Given how much space they had with the main stage and camera run you could have 4 cameras to record the model march cover everything and do it in one take. But to take 30 mins to record and direct something so simple, smacks of a director taking a bit of an public ego trip.
Eight hours for ONE game of deal or no deal?! Wow. Just…. wow.